if you know anything about the odd particulars of what i am forced to call "my life," then the title above has hopefully struck you with the full force of potential meaning.  my life has never strayed too far from "weird."  somehow though, mostly through a heavy application of irresponsibility over the past year, things have gotten a bit out of hand, even for me.

i've been on xanga, on and off, for the last five years now.  in that time, i've had the good fortune to read the thoughts, experiences and imaginings of a widely diverse group of people, some of whom i've gotten to know to varying degrees.  i even think of many of you as friends and hope you've found that feeling reciprocated from me. 

for all the friendships i've gained here, i've also seen people come and go over the years.  my subscription list is nearly half populated with what i think of as memorial listings.  needless to say, but i've missed them.  i miss so many people.  this whole time, being away from xanga recently, i've missed people that i didn't have to...

anyway, i am at a weird place in my life, and i need to get my proverbial shit together.  i might drop by now and then, and i might not, but i do not mean this to be "goodbye" either.  i just didn't want to disappear indefinitely without leaving some sort of explanation.  when there was no one else to turn to, you've been there for me.  and when the dust eventually settles, i hope some of you will still be here.  either way, i don't think i'll be able to stay away too damn long.

here's to hoping

got this at a local korean grocery store; it was hella cheap:

[admittedly, no big deal...but...]


for those of you who can't read korean:

[hahahah; the text beneath the description of the aroma reads "a feeling that refreshes, all the way to
your head"; and then the warning, in red, "no matter what, do not eat".  obviously, it's just one of
"those" things (korean-english artefact), but the company is called "feel good"--come on now!]


the only life (aside from my own) for which i am currently responsible:



a life i saved because i could (was trapped in my room--i released it into a breezy, bird-filled sky):

[which just kinda made me feel like, even with the best of intentions, sometimes our most benevolent
acts can still be utterly meaningless, and maybe even counterproductive to our goals.  am i wrong to
feel this way?  it's not discouraging, necessarily; it just kinda made me laugh at myself, watching this
frail, short-lived creature flying off into the blue where all its natural predators were floating about,
just waiting for something like a butterfly to come flitting along in the breeze...]

...and, no, this is not a post about baseball generally, or THAT park in particular.

when i find myself traipsing about the variegated grounds of the internet, to put it so loosely, i am often exposed to wonderful, impossible things there that make me want to make and or do similar such wonderful, impossible things.  things like that happen on xanga too, you know.  i guess what i'm trying so vaguely to say is that when i run across various expressions of creativity, humor or intelligence (you know, when one just really speaks to me), i often feel a corresponding desire to express some part of myself in the same way; be it music, words, art, etc.

in my own words, i'm something of a copycat.  slightly more confident people might refer to themselves as "jacks of all trades" given similar temperaments (my god, but spelling is perplexing me today).  those somewhere between tend to add the deprecatory clause, "king of none" to that.  but in my own estimation, i'm more of a copycat than anything else.  it turns out to be great fun, in so far as i am able to even attempt to mimic the things which inspire me.

it didn't occur to me until today, but i believe i have let quite a few of my fonder retreats fall by the wayside; among these, guitar, visual art, spoken word, even freakin tae kwon do.  yeah, i'm a nonviolent end of the spectrum kinda guy, but it's a cultural heritage thing.  plus, bruce lee was one of my earliest heroes.  i know, i know...i just mean, it feels good (to me) to...you know...be able to kick someone (effectively) in the forehead, even if you never ever want to do it.  or, at least theoretically, to be able to remove a cavalryman from his mount with just your leg.  theoretically...

wow; talk about unnecessary prologuing.  anyway, the point tonight was supposed to be that i want to share a bit of some of those lost arts of mine.  here i mean.  i don't care if you think i'm brilliant or a moron, i just like this one thought i had recently and wanted to expound upon it, complete with diagrams and all, but i am not yet ready to do it.  so, to really make this a meaningless post about an upcoming meaningless post--in other words:  a preview of nothing, but nothing from the future--here's a quick and nasty photo i took of the "notes" i scribbled for that...idea:

 

if this is not a new thought, meaning, if you've seen it somewhere already (preferably in academia, but really, anywhere), please let me know.  i was in the shower, thinking about so many different things, and this just occurred to me, that with all this bandying about of the idea that all things lie on a spectrum, maybe it was time to up the ante on it, so to speak.  now that people seem to be able to agree on the simple notion of spectrums, why don't we expand that to include the ousting of the dichotomy from modern academic thought?  if dichotomies are overly simplified, then aren't spectrums as well?  then again, it's been so long since i was a university student that this might already have been brought up and dismissed in my absence.  anyway, if any of this makes sense OR you've already heard, seen, read it somewhere before, then please tell me.  i have a lot of work planned for the development of this thing, but if it's redundant or otherwise unnecessary, i'd rather play more guitar hero.

thanks!